New Mexico is not South, it is Western. Not southern culture at all.
Y’know, sometimes you find out that the fork is placed in the smallest of ways. I have a sister who lives in Virginia, a “knowledge worker”. She has had a soft spot for McCain, and for reasons that she could not articulate has not liked/trusted Obama. She wasn’t hearing Obama’s specifics (and wouldn’t bother visiting his site to read the White Papers). She shrugged at Palin. I’ve made no headway. But she just left me a voicemail that this latest garbage from McCain has gotten her to make up her mind. Obama now has her vote.
N of one I know, but as my sister goes, so goes the nation!
Yeah, Letterman ripped him a new one. The feed from CBS Evening News set while McCain is getting made up when he was supposedly rushing to DC to save the nation was particularly cutting.
I liked Letterman’s parting shot, “We’re told now that the senator has concluded his interview with Katie Couric and is now on Rachael Ray’s show making a veal piccata.”
First thing I thought after seeing this commentary in the YouTube site:
I don’t know where Survey USA ranks in the reliability department, but they’re reporting that Obama is chippingaway McCain’s lead in Kansas. The new poll has McCain up by 12 points in Kansas, while a month ago he was up by 23. An 11-point swing in a month is big. McCain’s lead is probably safe for the next 40 days. Still, wouldn’t it be cool…
Well, the governor is a Democrat. Why not? The man is melting down in front of the country, and I think he knows it as well as anyone. The only thing is, this makes him very dangerous, because he’s very desperate. When I say dangerous, I’m not speaking figuratively. He personally dislikes Obama very much, in part because Obama is “stealing his turn.” He is surrounded by Rove operatives who have no principles whatsoever. He may well let himself be talked into believing the country would be better served by Obama’s permanent absence than his presence.
I hope I’m being batshit paranoid.
In terms of the final votes and turning red states blue … it is here that Palin losing her first blush appeal and the decreasing level of McCain enthusiasm may have a bigger end-effect than the relatively modest swing in poll numbers may indicate. It has been said before and will be said again - it all hinges on who comes out to vote. My guess is that for every swing voter who is deciding to go with Obama there is also a nominal McCain supporter who may just be too busy to come out that day. Meanwhile these sheenanigans only more fully rev up the Obama ground and likely turn-out. Look at what’s happening in Florida for example:
In another swing state, North Carolina,
Dang, even in Texas!
(Latino voters in Texas are overwhelmingly favoring Obama.)
Are these “likely voters”? Not by the traditional screens; they didn’t vote in the last Presidential cycle. But they are indeed likely to vote. Anything that keeps Obama enthusiasm up and suppresses it among the GOP base is likely to have effects greater than that captured in any polling numbers.
I suspect that McCain may run out of crazy-ass ideas to rev up his core.
Time to lay off the batshit.
I very much hope so. I don’t want to be paranoid. It’s just that I see a man with a fairly poor history of morality in decision making and whose lifelong ambitions are crumbling, and who is surrounded by other men who have no principles whatsoever. It’s a bad combination.
He’ll come up with something else. Thing is, the Palin thing was brilliant, in a craps shoot kind of way. If he’d done that closer to the election (impossible with a veep pick, obviously), that spike in the polls might have done what he needed.
The debate thing was just crap, but it’s what they went with. Maybe it was because it was all they had. Totally feeble.
Expect more and more feeble flailing as we approach November.
-Joe
Nope. Those are not “likely” voters and therefore aren’t included in most polls and projections.
I think Obama is the latter. I think McCain is neither. He’s offered no leadership or management at all. However, I think he thinks he’s the former…that’s pretty much the modern Republican leadership style (see Tom DeLay (“The Hammer”)).
Are interviews really as hard as Palin is showing them to be? I’ve never been interviewed on TV, but it seems like lots of people make it look so much easier than Palin is making it look. Is that my bias, something specifically about her, or just a function of her being a complete tyro?
Would other governors seem to be this far behind by now? Would (to pick another female governor from a distant state) Linda Lingle be having the same issues as she tried to cram for the “test”?
I can understand how hard a debate would be. Even seasoned politicians get burnt in debates. But these interviews aren’t unusual and she (at least to my eyes) is flailing.
Are you saying they’re unlikely to vote or that they’re not what pollsters consider “likely voters?” I think Obama has a great strategy of registering voters. You have to remember that one factor is previous voting history, which is impossible with new registrants. I’m guessing this doesn’t factor in for people’s first election but who knows. At any rate, that’s the thing about this election. Are all of these people Obama registered going to help him? It’s far from certain, but I’d MUCH rather be in his shoes than the Republicans’
I have been interviewed - not on TV but for magazines - and the three things you need to do is to have a clear message with soundbites you need to insert, and that you need to listen to the interviewer. It sounded to me like she did not have a good answer for the latest Fannie scandal. Her sound bite was too specific, and she clearly wasn’t listening to what Couric was asking - or sensed her obvious annoyance. She is clearly dealing with a better class of press now.
To be fair, the people interviewing me weren’t trying to catch me on anything.
She interviews like she’s being quizzed on the Baltimore Catechism.
And so on. Every answer is memorized in a certain way, and every time she has to answer the same or a similar question, she uses exactly the same words in exactly the same order. She knows this stuff like I knew the reason God made us.
Actually I would imagine that giving TV interviews would be rather difficult for the average person; just getting used to the lights and cameras would take quite a bit of practice. However if there is one thing politicians become good at it’s talking on TV. Even someone as inexperienced as Palin has given plenty of interviews and I bet she is pretty good at them back in Alaska.
The problem for her now is that she really knows very little about the national issues that she is being asked about. Plus she is under huge pressure as she has become a bigger story than most VP candidates and part of the story is her inability to do answer questions from the press. She is trying to handle the pressure by appearing folksy which makes things worse. The Couric interview was painful to watch.
It's hard to believe it was only a couple of weeks ago that some liberals were in panic about Palin and conservatives were jubilant. She is definitely a liability for McCain now.Before becoming a politician, Palin was a sportscaster. I’d think she’d be pretty comfortable with the cameras and lights and so on. She can’t use the camera-shy excuse; she’s just a dunce.
It’s not even that she’s a dunce. She has been very firmly coached to respond in a certain way. She is not supposed to deviate. So she ends up looking stupid whether or not she is.
The Rovian campaign style depends on the fundamental stupidity of the electorate to succeed. For example, in Troopergate, a situation in which she had originally agreed to cooperate fully and for which she probably could have gotten quite a bit of public support even if technically she stretched the boundaries of propriety in her office (not from me, but from the average Joe), they instead had her go the usual Bush route of stonewalling everything and trying to shut it down, giving the appearance that there’s something quite serious to hide (which there may or may not be - I have no idea).
I’m getting the feeling that this year the electorate may have wised up just enough that counting on their stupidity may not work. Conditions have deteriorated enough that they actually feel inclined to pay attention to issues for once in their lives.
ETA: Congress has just pretty much come to an agreement about what to do with the bailout, without John McCain’s heroics, thank you very much.